As online commerce and identity theft have increased, so has the need for personal identity verification and secure online commercial transactions. Preventing the theft of financial and personal information obtained from online financial transactions is an important objective. For a solution to find widespread acceptance, however, it must also be cost effective, user-friendly for consumers, efficient at the point of sale, convenient for vendors, merchants and service providers, and backward compatible with the existing bankcard infrastructure. Despite a wide range of approaches proposed to meet these objectives, none has yet taken hold to solve the continuing problems of providing an adequate level of personal identity verification and security for online commerce while also meeting the other commercially important objectives of convenience, ease of use and backward compatibility with the existing bankcard infrastructure. Accordingly, there continues to be a need for improved approaches to providing personal identity verification and security online commerce and other applications involving verification of the personal identity of persons attempting to engage in transactions.